Webb sends back the first pictures, Europe and Russia embark on the journey to Mars…
In 2022, these space highlights are worth looking forward to
◎Our reporter Liu Xia
In 2021, space exploration will bring countless splendor and splendor to mankind; in 2022, astronomers will continue to write new legends in space.
In a recent report, the British “Daily Mail” website listed the highlights of space in 2022, including the James Webb Space Telescope to return the first images, the official implementation of the asteroid impact experiment, and the probe’s departure. Searching for signs of life on Mars.
Webb Telescope will return first images
The $10 billion James Webb Space Telescope was launched on Christmas Day last year as a joint project of NASA, the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Canadian Space Agency, carrying a large 6.5-meter-diameter Gold-plated folded mirror, the largest and most sensitive mirror ever built, dubbed “Golden Eye” by scientists.
According to reports, the Webb telescope successfully opened the “Golden Eye” and entered its final orbit on January 24 this year, with the primary and secondary mirrors fully deployed. It will orbit around the second Lagrangian point of the Sun-Earth system, an area about 1.5 million kilometers from Earth. After that, the Webb telescope has to undergo several months of cooling to approach absolute zero, and then calibrated to officially begin scientific observation activities. So people will have to wait another 6 months to see the first images released.
More powerful than Hubble, the Webb telescope will search the universe for the optical flow of stars and galaxies that first formed 13.7 billion years ago.
The Space Launch System and Artemis missions
NASA will conduct the first test flight of its Space Launch System (SLS) rocket in March 2022. Billed as “the most powerful rocket in the world,” the $23 billion rocket is expected to kickstart a new generation of human space exploration, starting with transporting astronauts to and from the moon.
SLS can send astronauts and supplies to the moon on a single mission, but its first test flight, the Artemis 1 mission, will only carry the unmanned Orion crew capsule.
Artemis 1 was due to launch next month, but was delayed until March or April due to a “minor problem” during the testing process.
NASA estimates that SLS will cost about $2 billion per launch. The giant rocket will be the workhorse of the “Artemis mission,” which will send astronauts to the moon and eventually to Mars.
SpaceX’s “Starship” orbital test
Elon Musk, head of SpaceX, said the company’s Starship rocket will conduct its first orbital test flight in March or April this year.
The Starship is the largest rocket ever built, fully reusable, consisting of a super-heavy booster and a Starship spacecraft that will one day be used to land on Mars and deliver a large payload (up to a ton) into near Earth orbit. The Starship is designed for orbital refueling, so it can travel farther than low-Earth orbit, including the moon and Mars.
In December, Musk tweeted ambitious plans to add three more Raptor engines to the Starship, increasing its maximum thrust by 50 percent to vastly improve its payload performance.
‘Double Asteroid Redirection Test’ Mission Hits Asteroid
The Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART), a NASA project designed to impact an asteroid’s moon to slightly change its orbit, will for the first time demonstrate the ability to alter the motion and trajectory of an asteroid in space. Kinetic Impactor Technology.
DART also includes a small companion camera satellite, which is expected to hit the target object between September 26 and October 2 this year.
DART’s target asteroid poses no threat to Earth and is a “perfect testing ground” to see if a collision could change its course, NASA said.
‘Mars Astrobiology’ project explores life on Mars
“Mars Astrobiology” (ExoMars) is a joint project of ESA and Roscosmos and includes an orbiter and a rover called Rosalind Franklin.
The SUV-sized vehicle will set off for Mars in September. It was originally scheduled to launch in August 2020, but was delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The mission’s primary mission is to determine whether life once thrived on Mars and to better understand the history of water on Mars. The rover will be assembled by Airbus and land on Mars’ Oksha plateau in June 2023. Previous research has suggested that the Oksha Plateau may be an ancient Martian delta.
The rover includes a drilling rig that can probe below the surface of Mars and a tiny life-searching laboratory in an ultra-clean zone.
The ExoMars project will search for signs of life about 3.66 meters below the surface of Mars for the first time. There, the biological features of life may be well preserved.
‘Bippi Colombo’ probe flies by Mercury for the second time
The second “close” encounter with the planet Mercury by the BepiColombo probe, jointly developed by the European and Japanese space agencies, will take place in June 2022, when the probe will fly to about 322 feet above the planet’s surface. Within kilometers, similar to the flyby in October 2021.
In addition, it will fly by the closest planet to the sun four times, in June 2023, September 2024, December 2024 and January 2025. The ultimate goal is to enter a scientific orbit between 483 kilometers and 1,497 kilometers from Mercury for exploration activities, which it will finally enter in December 2025.
Although Mercury is ten times as far from Earth as Jupiter is, the time it takes for the probe to reach Mercury is comparable to reaching Jupiter. Because the probe needs to “brake” to resist the gravitational pull from the sun to reach Mercury, the probe will go a long way to do this – by making multiple flybys of other planets in the inner solar system (including Mercury).